States/Somatic

    Body dissolution

    The body forgets its edges

    The feeling that the physical body is dissolving, expanding, or merging with the surrounding environment. The usual sense of where the body ends and the world begins becomes uncertain.

    Typical intensity

    8/10

    What is Body dissolution?

    Body dissolution is the somatic counterpart of ego dissolution. Where ego dissolution erases the boundary between self and world at the level of identity, body dissolution erases it at the level of felt sensation. The usual sense of where the body ends and the environment begins becomes uncertain, fluid, or absent entirely.

    Effects

    The experience often begins with a sense of heaviness or lightness, the body feeling either impossibly dense or feather-light. This progresses to a sense of the body's boundaries becoming permeable, as if one could feel the air moving through the skin or the floor rising up through the body.

    At full intensity, people report feeling that they have no body at all, or that their body has expanded to fill the room, the building, or the landscape. The experience is not painful; it is more like the concept of "having a body" temporarily loses meaning.

    Body dissolution is strongly associated with psilocybin, salvia divinorum, ketamine, and high-dose cannabis edibles. It often co-occurs with ego dissolution and can serve as either a gateway to or a consequence of that state.

    Reflection

    What would remain of your experience if the sense of having a body were temporarily removed?